When I was a young power station manager I had an American engineer from Tennessee as my deputy. He told me a story about Abraham Lincoln. I can’t count for its veracity but I will repeat it just the same.

At a function Lincoln was approached by a woman who gushed, “Mr Lincoln it is such a privilege to meet you. I can’t begin to tell you how wonderful I think you are!”

Lincoln responded, “I am sorry to disavow you Madam. When I get up in the morning I sit on the edge of the bed and put on my trousers, one leg after the other, just like every other man!”

Human consciousness provides us with many benefits, but unfortunately, from the self-awareness that consciousness provides, ego evolves. It is ego that promotes our need for specialness. Ego drives us to try to have others see us not as we are but as how we would like to be seen.

Identity politics is underpinned by ego needs. Identity politics has two main mechanisms that try to promote the particular identity I choose. On the (false) positive side it seeks to prove how wonderful my chosen identity is. On the (false) negative side it wants to highlight what a suffering victim I am because of my identity. So in pursuit of my identity politics I either seek to show how wonderful I am or how unjustly oppressed I am.

In some respects, we give up our individuality when we align with groups in order to enhance our false sense of self-esteem. In ancient times when the world was not as connected as it has now become, probably the only group you could align with was your family or your tribe. Often such alignment was not so much to meet ego needs but to meet survival needs. But now, when most of us have our survival needs met, we align with croups to meet our ego needs. Such groups can be based on race, gender, religion or nationality or it can be something as trite as a sporting club.

But let me illustrate my thesis on identity politics by showing how the positive and negative aspects manifest in one of the dominant examples of identity politics and on which I have previously written extensively, viz indigenous politics.

As I related above, one of the features of identity politics is to maintain somehow your identity grouping confers special status on those belonging to the group. Some of Australian indigenous peoples believe that their culture makes them special. The claim is often made that Australian indigenous culture is the longest enduring culture in the world.

Well this might well be true but we must interrogate this claim by asking what particular benefits does this confer on indigenous people?

In human history culture is a relatively new concept. Evolutionary biologists tell us that cultures emerged as humans acquired the capacity to process more information beyond the requirements of day to day survival. They point to the fact that the human brain has expanded considerably in size in the last 100.000 years or so. But it’s not just only brain size that matters, it is the increasing interconnections which seemingly have given us access to human consciousness. (I choose these words deliberately because I don’t subscribe to what determinists like Daniel Dennett believe and that is human consciousness is the manifestation of the complexification of the human brain. But I’ll leave that argument for another day.)

According to historian Yuval Noah Harari this also led to the concept of human culture.

This development of mind gave humans the ability to process larger quantities of information about the world. This in turn led to more sophisticated strategies for hunting and self-preservation. But this augmented capacity to process information also led to the ability to better manage social relationships which led to the expansion of such social relationships beyond the family and the tribe.

It enabled the development of what we now call “culture”. Consequently humans began to be capable of belonging to larger groups.  This development also allowed humans to deal with abstract concepts which included ritual and spiritual development Harari maintains at this point human development was no longer restricted by biology. He calls this the “Cognitive Revolution”. From this point onwards understanding of human progress requires us to move beyond mere biological explanations and to consider the influence of ideas, images and fantasies as well. Human beliefs now become a dominant factor in human development. These beliefs are also a large determinant of our social interactions. This in turn becomes the source of our culture.

But of course the physical environment also fashions culture.

When Europeans settled in Australia in the late eighteenth century they had little knowledge of its prior occupants. Some of the Dutch and English seamen who had chanced by the shores of the Great Southern Land had encountered the indigenous inhabitants. Some of those encounters were amiable and some were hostile. But, by and large, coming from a Europe that was just beginning to embrace the Industrial Revolution, confronting a people who were largely naked, knew little of agriculture, and could manufacture nothing more sophisticated than a boomerang or a bark canoe, it was not surprising that they were labelled as “primitive”.

Before European settlement, it is fair to say that Australia was very sparsely populated. Some historians studying the prehistory of Australia have suggested that, at the time of European settlement the indigenous population numbered no more than 300,000. Some favourable environments, for example the northern and eastern coastal margins and the Murray valley, permitted more concentrated populations. The arid interior however could only sustain very low population densities, often as low as one person per 35 square miles (approx. 90 square kilometres).

Survival in the harsh Australian conditions required a much different response to human development than that required to prosper in the temperate climes, fertile lands and generous rainfalls of most European communities. So although they never had the resources or the knowhow to invent the steam engine, the Australian Aborigines had nevertheless adapted to one of the harshest environments on earth and survived. It is no doubt that this struggle for survival was influential in shaping indigenous culture.

As the wonderful Australian historian, D J Mulvaney proclaimed:

The dispersal of the Aboriginals throughout this vast land, their responses and adjustments to the challenges of its harsh environment, and their economical utilisation of its niggardly resources, are stimulating testimony to the achievements of the human spirit in the face of adversity.

Estimates vary, but it seems some 300 tribes occupied Australia at the time of European settlement, varying in size from less than a hundred in the most arid regions to several thousand where conditions were more favourable. Their long separation resulted in many languages. (In view of all this it seems somewhat euphemistic to bestow the title of “first nations” on these disparate tribes as some are wont to do.)

Despite the European settlers disparaging the primitiveness of the indigenous inhabitants, they had adapted admirably to their harsh environment and managed to sustain their livelihoods in circumstances that would often prove fatal to the newcomers. And although not understood by Europeans until a century or more after they first settled in Australia, the indigenous population had devised techniques, including the strategic use of fire, to maintain their environment in a way that enabled them to harvest its resources in a sustainable way.

(However I must confess that this artifice – the use of fire – was not the brilliant environmental strategy that many champions of indigenous culture proclaim. The low population of a nomadic race that generally frequently moved around the landscape ensured indigenous people had little deleterious impacts on the natural environment. The use of fire seems not so much a technique to preserve the environment but a strategy to facilitate the hunting of game.)

There is, however, no denying that indigenous culture provided immense benefit in ensuring the survival of indigenous people in a particularly unforgiving environment. To put it bluntly, it was a successful survival strategy before European colonisation of Australia.

Now those who want to glorify their indigenous heritage often assert they share a culture that is the oldest enduring culture on earth. Whilst this might be disputed, the pertinent question to ask is this a good thing? Today’s indigenous people are often disadvantaged by seeking to adopt the cultural more´s of their forefathers.

There are lots of problems with the notion of “indigenous culture”. To begin with at the time of European settlement, as outlined above, the indigenous population probably comprised of something like 300 disparate tribes. These tribes were separate enough to have their own languages and differing cultural attributes. Many of those things that most Australians might believe form part of the distinctive Australian indigenous cultures, for example the use of the totem system to guard against inbreeding, the use of the didgeridoo, the boomerang, the woomera, fish traps, bark canoes and so on were not ubiquitous at all across the indigenous population but confined to certain tribes.

And no culture is of course enduring because all cultures are evolving.

A lot of cultural evolution is caused by contact with other cultures. In prehistoric times Australia was settled by several waves of immigrants (dare I call them colonisers?) out of Asia. Each of these waves would have impacted on the cultures on extant inhabitants.

It is often argued that Australian indigenous culture is unique because of Australia’s relative isolation. But this is not entirely true. Before the European discovery of Australia, Asian trepangers ventured south to fish in Australia’s norther waters. They established camps which they returned to annually. They interacted and interbred with the native population which certainly would have had some cultural impacts.

Relatively recent cultural embellishments are soon looked back on as part of “authentic”traditional culture.

For example many of us would happily believe that we were consuming traditional Italian cuisine if we had fresh pasta with a rich tomato sauce. Tomatoes are Mexican in origin and only reached Europe some 400years ago.

Cuisine can often mislead us this way. For example most of us believe that there is something quintessentially Irish about the humble potato. The potato however originally came from Peru. They were introduced into Ireland in 1589 by Sir Walter Raleigh but it took some decades for them to be established as a staple crop.

There are several aspects of purported Australian indigenous culture that seem to be very recent additions as well.

Notions of culture are often artificially cultivated. As you might gather from my name, I have a largely Scottish heritage. Now if I were to ask you what are the significant features of Scottish culture it would not be surprising if you nominated such things as bagpipes, tartans and haggis. But bagpipes are not specifically Scottish. Bagpipes originated in antiquity in the Middle East and successfully migrated to Asia, Africa and Europe. The various forms of bagpipes form a significant part of the folk music of many nationalities but the Scots have tried to appropriate them as an identifier of Scottish culture.

The use of Scottish tartans was largely an exercise of defiance by the Scots loyal to the Stuarts in their struggles against the English. Whilst they undoubtedly existed with lesser impact before this they were adopted more broadly in the early eighteenth century. (I am probably biased in this argument because the Scott tartan is one if the least attractive tartans!)

Now what about the haggis? There is substantial evidence to suggest the haggis was an English dish being mentioned in English cook books in the seventeenth century. The haggis only seems to be aligned with Scottish culture after Scottish folk-hero and poet, Robert Burns wrote a poem in 1787 which he titled Address to the Haggis.

So in many respects cultures are not “discovered” so much as “constructed”. Australian indigenous culture is no different in this regard.

Suffice is to say that indigenous culture:

• Was useful in surviving in an environment inhospitable to most humans.
• Was not homogenous across the whole indigenous population but varied considerably between tribes.
• Certainly was not static but evolved over time.

Moreover, some aspects of indigenous culture like the pervasiveness of misogyny and the lack of individual property rights made it difficult for those strongly attached to it to integrate into European society.

Now I am not trying particularly to single out indigenous culture for criticism, I am just trying to show the lengths that those engaged in identity politics go to try and validate their specialness.

As I outlined above, two of the characteristics of those who indulge in identity politics are a tendency to exaggerate how special they are but on the other hand to amplify their victimhood status.

If I continue to use as my exemplar indigenous identity, one of the claims of special victimhood relates to colonisation. Indigenous activists claim that Australia’s indigenous peoples have been particularly damaged by the British colonisation of Australia.

There are a number of factors we should examine when weighing up this claim.

From around 200BC most human beings have lived in empires. Quite often those empires have had expansionary ambitions. As a result on every continent there is a history of invasion, conquest and colonisation. Even before these times, as the Old Testament attests, colonisation was extensively practiced.

Whether you like it or not, it is an indisputable fact that the history of the world has been largely shaped by the waxing and waning of civilisations. Our school curricula are diminished because such history is largely neglected in our schools today. But we used to learn about the expansionist Roman Empire, which spread its tentacles into Gaul, the British Isles and North Africa. We were taught about the exploits of the Macedonian King, Alexander the Great, who extended his empire from his Greek homeland all the way east as far as present day Pakistan. We learnt about Genghis Khan who led his Mongol hordes out of China to briefly rule most of modern-day Russia, China, Korea, Southeast Asia, Persia, India, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Then of course was the Saracen Empire which enabled Muslim militants to expand from their Middle Eastern homeland to conquer North Africa and much of the Iberian Peninsula.

By the fifteenth century however, in Western Europe borders had largely been determined and neighbouring nation-states had settled into an uneasy co-existence. With the distractions of border conflicts abated somewhat, the Europeans began to look further afield. Thus commenced the great era of maritime exploration, led by the Portuguese and the Dutch but soon followed by the Spanish and the British and finally the French, sailing ships from Western Europe began to explore the globe.

In what we would now view as puny little wooden sailing ships, they initiated the European exploration of the Americas, Africa, the East Indies, Australasia and the Pacific. In doing so, some few of these courageous mariners ended up circumnavigating the world, which showed, as the ancient Greeks had long believed, that the earth approximated a sphere. This was not only a geographical statement but a sociological one as well. It cemented the concept of one humankind and led the way to the concept of Darwinian evolution.

These outrageous feats of maritime exploration led in due course to the outright, if temporary, European political and economic domination of the world.

Now this was not to say that there had been no previous explorers of note – it was just that the impact of this European exploration far exceeded events of the past.

The Chinese had once been assiduous explorers.

Historian J M Roberts wrote:

For centuries Chinese seamen had used much the same navigational aids as Europeans, some of them at an earlier date. The Ming emperors had skilful admirals, ocean-going junks which were probably the largest ships in the world of their time, and experienced crews. They sent expeditions round Southeast Asia to India, the Persian Gulf and Arabia. One commander, Ching Ho, took a huge fleet as far as the East Africa coast, a major feat of long-distance navigation. Yet in 1480, the Ming court decided not to continue such maritime enterprise.

The Chinese subsequently withdrew into isolationism.

The Arabs too had been accomplished sailors. They had travelled to Canton and Java to sell slaves and trade in spices. But they too had never ventured very far away from their homelands.

But the European fleets ventured out to the far corners of the earth. This was no doubt facilitated by technical advances including the refinement of the compass and improved cartography. The European maritime project was also in some ways forced upon them by the domination of the Saracen Empire which closed land routes to Asia.

So the European expedition to explore the world was provoked by many stimulants and it was part of the more general transformation in European culture that we have come to know as the Renaissance.

Surprisingly this endeavour was initiated by one of Europe’s smallest nations – Portugal. Extending the exploration of the known world was initiated by Prince Henry, the Navigator. He sponsored expeditions to go further and further down the West coast of Africa. That inspired other European nations to expand their exploratory efforts. The history of this exploration is fascinating, but it is not the purpose of this essay to explore the bold endeavours of these courageous men. Our focus in this essay is to examine what these intrepid explorers found in these new lands.

Initially they sought treasure. The Portuguese found that on the Guinea Coast of West Africa there was gold. The Spanish found in Central America huge quantities of gold and silver. The Dutch found in the East Indies copious supplies of spices that were greatly valued in Europe.

These initial forays into foreign lands were temporarily ceased by the impact of the Napoleonic Wars which required European countries to again focus on internal struggles. But once these issues were settled, Europeans headed out into the world with renewed confidence.

What their explorers had found was that there were many parts of these newly European discovered countries that were inhabited by primitive tribal societies. Such countries which were without a central government that provided a concerted national face to the external world were subject to colonisation without the likelihood of any consequential resistance. Unlike the initial grab for treasure, subsequent colonisers were more interested in settling in these remote territories and cultivating, pastoralizing and mining these new-found lands.

In the case of Great Britain where farming and pastoral efforts were constrained by access to a small land mass, these far off countries offered a limitless opportunity to farm and raise livestock. Subsequent colonisers were more interested in settling in these remote territories and cultivating and pastoralizing these new found lands rather than just purloining their treasure. On top of that, in Britain, because of a particularly punitive legal system, jails were overflowing. In Australia’s particular case, the sparsely populated land enabled convicts to be transported so that they might under supervision complete their sentences and be given an opportunity to start a new life.

At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, European countries had established several hundred colonies all around the world. Some of these were tiny and some large. Some had already fought for .and obtained independence. Britain, largely because of its post Industrial Revolution wealth, had been the chief coloniser. Britain had about 120 colonies. The British Empire reached its peak around 1920 when the area of its governed territories exceeded 35 million km^2. On the eve of World War ll, the inhabitants of Britain and her colonies totalled more than 500 million people.

Many who inhabited those colonies were comfortable with their British dependency. After all the colonial masters had brought to them education, rule of law, liberal tolerance, political representation, property rights and the security of borders which were not prevalent in their societies prior to colonisation.. In this way enlightenment ideas which were previously only the precinct of European countries were introduced more broadly into the world.

By and large the British colonies improved the welfare of their populations.

As Bruce Gilley, Professor of Political Science at Portland State University has written:

The case for European colonisation is simple. It is the case for humanity itself, for the ways that humans have always acted rationally to better their situations in life, and those of their children. It is the case for having a teacher, a coach or a model. It is the case for having opportunity. It is the case for peace, progress, and running water. It is the case for living in a place where life is better and escaping from a place where life is worse. It is the case for human agency and freedom. In short, it is the case for humble submission to the facts of life rather than the worked up intellectual fantasies of the scholar class.

Now whilst there were some Nationalists that had always decried colonialism (e.g. Mahatma Ghandi), the anticolonialism movement didn’t gain particular momentum until after the Second World War, the seeds of anti-colonialism had been sown much earlier.

It had its genesis in the dogma of the communist movement lead by Lenin. But it was soon joined by the far right. The Nazis had seen themselves as freeing Germany from the “colonial: rule of the Treaty of Versailles.

After the Second World War, either through exhaustion or depleted resources many of the European colonialists granted their colonies autonomy.

Whilst this might have been applauded by the libertarians, the decolonisation of quite a few of the previous colonies was an unmitigated disaster. In Zanzibar, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Rwanda and Sri Lanka it led to genocides.

But by now left wing intellectuals were beginning to construct an ideology that was anti-Western and a major plank of this misguided ideology was a fervent anti-colonialism. These passionate anti-colonialists frequently posited that it was necessary for these previous colonies to eschew Western political and cultural beliefs in favour of Marxism or failing that an extreme version of socialism.

In reviewing the progress of the countries that were once colonies, as Gilley (referenced above) writes:

It did not take a Ph.D. to realise that the countries which had preserved their colonial legal orders, economic systems, bureaucracies, and political pluralism were the ones that were doing better.

But let’s now remove ourselves from the debate about colonialism generally and consider the impacts of colonisation in Australia. The Australian colonies from which our states developed were a mix of penal colonies and Crown colonies. Each was headed by a Governor appointed by the British Government and was subject to British Law. In due course other useful institutions were established like schools and hospitals. The British brought with them their technology and thus steamships, railways, motor vehicles, electricity, reticulated water systems and factories followed colonisation.

Initially Australian settlement was limited to coastal areas but inevitably pastoralists, farmers and miners gradually opened up Australia’s interior.

Now when we review the history of the European colonising powers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was not only the British that had designs on occupying Australia. At various times The Portuguese, the Dutch and the French sought to gain a foothold in the Great South Land. Therefore it was almost inevitable that Australia would be colonised by Europeans.

Consequently it is illogical for black activists to decry the impacts of British colonialism on indigenous people. Instead of pulling down statues of Captain Cook they could have been pulling down statues of Tasman or La Perouse. In any event Australia would have been colonised by one European country or another.

No doubt the displacement of indigenous peoples from their tribal lands by the European settlers was traumatic for some indigenous people. And it was no walk in the park for the settlers either having to eke out a living in an arid land very different from their homelands. But as we saw above, European settlement with its post-Enlightenment views and values also brought many benefits.

As Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price pointed out during the debate on the Voice Referendum, colonisation had brought benefits to all Australians including those of indigenous heritage. As she rightly said:

….if we keep telling Aboriginal people that they are victims, we are effectively removing their agency and giving them the expectation that someone else is responsible for their lives.

In truth, most indigenous people are prospering under the values, the technologies, the Rule of Law and the systems of governance we have developed which emanated from those British colonial settlements.

There is one indigenous demographic who have not benefitted so much because they have largely withdrawn from mainstream society, not abiding by its laws nor participating in its economy. They have not assimilated into our society but have taken the route of separatism. This was the route championed by “Nugget” Coombs.

Herbert Cole “Nugget” Coombs was a very distinguished Australian. In 1949, Labor Prime Minister, Ben Chifley appointed Coombs to be Governor of the Commonwealth Bank. When later that year Menzies led the conservatives to power, to the surprise of many, he kept Coombs on. In 1960, when the Reserve Bank was created to take on the central banking functions, Menzies appointed Coombs as its first Governor.

Coombs retired from the Public Service in 1968 but maintained an active interest in the Arts and more particularly in Aboriginal Affairs.

Coombs’ early life was in Western Australia where he had engaged with the Aboriginal community and became concerned for their welfare. This developed into a lifelong passion for him.

In 1968 he was appointed the Chairman of the Australian Council for Aboriginal Affairs which was set up essentially to prosecute the changes which were brought about by the 1967 Referendum. He subsequently became a close advisor to Gough Whitlam who was then leading the Labor Party. It is said that he essentially wrote the Labor Party’s policy on Aboriginal Affairs which it took to the 1972 election which it won, ensconcing Whitlam as Prime Minister.

Coombs opened the 1968 Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. In his speech he assured those present that the Council he chaired would “strengthen the sense of Aboriginal Australians as a distinctive group within our society, with a distinctive contribution to make to the quality of our national life.” This, obviously, was at odds with the views of the Liberal Country Party Government that was espousing assimilation. Coombs also championed the proposition that indigenous people should be able to be repatriated to their traditional tribal lands. He supported the establishment of remote aboriginal communities and had a romantic notion that they would thrive if allowed to take up more traditional lifestyles.

As a consequence of Coomb’s recommendations, the Government of the day facilitated the establishment of remote Aboriginal communities, ostensibly to return indigenous people to their homelands where they were expected to hone a living from traditional foraging and hunting augmented by commerce associated with traditional art and culture and hopefully tourism. The Government provided generous economic support of such communities in anticipation that they would eventually become self-sufficient.

Nugget Coombs championed these remote communities as a vehicle for enabling Indigenous self-determination. Self-determination might be defined as the right of a group of people to determine their political status and pursue their economic, social and cultural development. Unfortunately, most of these communities are not sustainable because they don’t provide reasonable economic opportunities. Consequently they contain large numbers of Indigenous people who are doomed to exist on welfare. What’s more, their social and cultural more´s have declined (as the appalling statistics regarding unemployment, the incidence of domestic violence, the abuse of drugs and alcohol, educational outcomes, rates of suicide and the burgeoning rates of foetal alcohol syndrome will attest). It seems therefore unlikely their circumstances can be improved without again some paternalistic intervention.

In an Australian University working paper in 1979, Coombs proclaimed that the so-called homeland settlements would be “autonomous and self-sufficient economic units”. He asserted that “production, including hunting and gathering will be directed to home consumption and the reduction of dependence on imported goods”. Of course he was gravely mistaken and the remote indigenous settlements have continued to be a drain on the resources of the Federal Government, and what’s more they have become dysfunctional enclaves which have caused great suffering to indigenous peoples and created many barriers which have prevented them from partaking in the normal lives enjoyed by other Australians.

The separationist philosophy of Coombs was highlighted by his recommendation that the curriculum of the indigenous schools in the remote communities should be restricted to basic literacy and numeracy “to minimise assimilationist influences.”

In the last half century, following these events, a huge “Aboriginal industry” has been set up comprising government departments, welfare agencies, not-for-profit organisations, consultants, academics and left-wing opinion leaders all supposedly devoted to aiding indigenous Australians overcome their disadvantage. The most insidious effect of all of this has been to convince many indigenous people that they are victims and that it is somebody else’s (generally the state’s) responsibility to “save”  them. The growing acceptance by so many of our indigenous fellows that they are passive recipients of their own fates with no sense of an internal locus of control has made it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And of course the Aboriginal industry has no incentive whatsoever to try to cultivate a sense of agency amongst indigenous folk because their continued influence, not to mention their continued funding, is largely dependent on the sense of indigenous victimhood.

The romantic vision of Coombs has proven to be flawed. His desire was that within “the security of the homeland context, the young would grow up capable of making use of what white society offers but remaining essentially uncorrupted by it.” Reality, in fact, has displayed just the opposite of this in the remote communities. The young are in fact corrupted by the worst of white society, (alcohol, drugs, pornography, indolence and irresponsibility) without assuming the best (industry, ambition, and social responsibility).

All this has been facilitated by a particularly flawed ideology. As I have written previously:

It is the notion that prior to colonisation, Australia’s indigenous peoples lived in an idyllic paradise. It has become almost a secular version of “Paradise Lost”. This myth is perpetuated by the black activists who are keen to accentuate the notion that all the difficulties and dysfunction experienced by indigenous peoples are due to colonisation. This grossly distorted point of view is actively promulgated because it supports the activist’s crutch of indigenous victimhood.

French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau first proposed that the “noble savage” lived an idyllic life uncorrupted by civilisation. This concept struck a chord with many romanticists then and since.

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes took a contrary view. He postulated that life without civilisation as we know it was likely to be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.

With respect to the indigenous population of Australia, I suspect that Hobbes’ view was more accurate than Rousseau’s. Except for the most fertile areas where water was abundant and sources of game and edible plants reliable, providing basic sustenance would have proved difficult. We know that traditional culture in most Aboriginal tribes had problematic aspects. They were violent and predominantly paternalistic. Payback and belief in sorcery encroached on everyday life. Violence against women was endemic and infanticide widely practised. All this doesn’t sound too “noble” to me!

We can’t change our history so we must try and make the most of the circumstances that our history has provided for us.

As the Persian polymath, Omar Khayyam told us:

The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

Surely the lessons here for indigenous people are twofold, viz.

1. You can’t cancel history – you can only learn to live with it.  One way or another Australia was bound to be colonised. On balance most would agree it was probably better to be colonised by the British than the other European alternatives. Moreover the romanticised ideal of pre-colonial indigenous Utopia, despite the mythologising of Bruce Pascoe and others, is far from the truth and is not something a logical person would aspire to. Pre-colonial indigenous existence was not a bed of roses!
2. Colonisation has brought many benefits. Indigenous people can enjoy those benefits if they choose to engage with our modern, liberal democracy (as many do). Those that are stuck in the mire of victimhood, as Senator Price opined, have also chosen to absolve themselves for responsibility for their own lives. That can only lead to despair. Australia is a better place because of colonisation if you only choose to avail yourself of those benefits. Wallowing in the victimhood of colonisation consigns you to a bitter life with little hope of redemption.

So there you have it. I have tried to argue that identity politics is propped up by the notion that you need to glorify the specialness of the identity group that you belong to, but on the other hand you must argue that your identity group is particularly victimised.

Using as an exemplar of identity politics indigenous activism I have outlined that the particular notion of specialness is often promoted using indigenous culture as a defining aspect. I have argued that this differentiator is highly suspect. On the other hand I have argued that one of the purported reasons for indigenous victimhood is colonisation, yet most of the issues impacting on disadvantaged indigenous people have no relationship to colonisation at all. And those indigenous people who have assimilated into the Australian community share the benefits of colonisation that the rest of us do.

This shows us the egregious error of identity politics. Identity politics is based on the need of those with an insecure sense of self to conflate their specialness.

It also helps our understanding of these issues if we can for a moment put aside our parochial concerns and look more broadly with some historical understanding how these issues have evolved.

None of us are particularly special. When we can reconcile with this indisputable fact and put aside our egos, social interactions become much simpler and life becomes much more rewarding.